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The End of the Road For Texting Truckers
crimeandpunishment writes "The US Transportation Department is calling for a permanent ban on texting while driving, for interstate truck and bus drivers. An interim ban has been in place since January. The government says it is doing everything it can to make roads safer by reducing the threat of distracted drivers. The Transportation Department says nearly 6,000 people were killed and half a million injured in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2008."
Reckless driving is already an offense in every state I know of. Why not just enforce that law?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I remember when truck drivers aimed for 1 million miles with no accidents, usually because it ended with a nice pretty statue, name in most of the large trucking magazines and a nice wad of cash. Well that was before the semi-licenced idiots got on the road. Carry on...carry on.
Om, nomnomnom...
Most trucks drive on state and federal highways, so state and federal legislation makes sense.
Of course, truckers can still look up contacts, dial their phones, look up addresses and map them, download apps, and play games on their smartphones while driving. They just can't text.
This is not only a dupe of an article published 5 hours ago (still near the top of the front page), it's from the exact same submission. Perhaps samzenpus has been editing slashdot while driving and this is the result?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
can arguably be done perfectly safely in the right circumstances.
I wouldn't call luck being "perfectly safe".
Seriously, do you understand what you have to do to text while driving? You have to take your eyes off the road completely and focus most of your attention on entering your text message.
Most of your job while driving is not keeping the vehicle running down the street straight. A six year old can do that (there are a number of COPS episodes that prove that). Most of your job as a driver is making sure you are not going to run into someone else, or that someone else is not going to run into you. It doesn't take a PHD in statistics to recognize that any activity that requires your entire attention, and requires you to remove your eyes from the road, is going to prevent you from doing your job as a driver. It isn't rocket science.
I do believe it's fair to say that drunk driving is a causal factor in accidents - the difference being that alcohol is a cause of bad judgment while things like driving too fast for the conditions are an effect of bad judgment.
There are a number of studies that show your judgment while just talking on a cell phone is nearly as impaired as being drunk. Can you honestly say texting is going to be better than that?
Common sense man, you don't need a scientist to tell you everything. Correlation does not prove causation, sure, but this isn't bizzaro world where correlation proves there is no causation. Correlation is strong evidence suggesting a link, and a little common sense points out the obvious factors. Distractions cause accidents, in fact very few things cause accidents except distractions and chemical or physical impairments (i.e. drugs, alcohol, or sleep deprivation). To take something as distracting as texting and say you can't assume it causes accidents is down right idiotic.
To sum it all up, you sir, are a dumbass.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller